A verse of comparisons.
A more excellent ministry—a better covenant—better promises. How all this illustrates the way of God! Whatever he appoints and plans is good, and good just because it is exactly proportioned to good ends. But these ends have to be measured by the power of men to fall in with them. Man, with his limited prospect, reckons to be an end what God reckons as only the means to a greater end. God made to Israel promises of a land of inheritance on earth, just that they might thereby be prepared in time to see that there was something much better. Higher demands were made, a completer obedience was possible, and the conditions existed for fulfilling richer promises. And of this new state of things Jesus, as the Mediator, is the central Figure; it is his presence and his power that make the new state of things possible. The better covenant is only better because it can become a reality, and Jesus it is who makes the reality. The old covenant, as we clearly see, was a broken covenant. God brought his people into the land of promise; but, after all, this could not be called the keeping of his promise. His promise was made upon conditions to be supplied by the people to whom the promise was made. They did not supply these conditions, consequently the promise could not be fulfilled. And now, instead of Moses, the mere proclaimer of law, there comes Jesus to complete law, to expand promises into their spiritual fullness, and, at the same time, act as a Mediator in really receiving these promises for men. If God's laws are to be written upon our hearts, it can only be by the work of Jesus. If we are to be persuaded into a living interest in God's promises, and to care for the things he wants us to care for, it must be by the work of Jesus. He only can inspire us individually with an inclination to set our names to the new covenant. He only can show us the inward realities of which outward shows are but the parabolic expression. Real mediation, how rich it is in results! It is not like the wire along which electricity travels, a mere medium of communication. It is a medium of life and growth. Jesus Christ is the real Mediator in living, abiding, unbreakable, necessary communion with God, and in the same sort of communion with man. The old covenant did nothing more than reveal man's utter deplorable weakness in himself. The new covenant reveals man's strength in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ can make all things new; he can make the good better; he can bring living realities instead of living, tantalizing forms; he can make man stand erect in the strength of his renewed nature, disposed to enter into covenant with God, and able to keep the terms of the covenant he has made.—Y.